1922, and then you change the world again
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: Edward's multifaceted reactions to Esme/Carlisle, which results in a walk and an unexpected surprise of his own. Esme/Carlisle, and Edward/Carlisle if you squint hard enough. Mostly just a changing world, and something beautiful.


_**1922 - Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois**_

_Dreams should last a long time_  
~*~

Dedicated to Stephanie, as always

* * *

He does what he should, what he's supposed to, what's right -

_Tells Carlisle Esme loves him the same way. Tells him to be happy.  
That they belong together, that they complete each other._

Then he waits until they are together, until the softest touch relieves them both of the anxiety of being apart, listening to how their thoughts calm and seeing how each smiles in that way they never do for any other person he's watched them interact with. He writes a note, short and to the point, leaving it on the table nearest the door, cleared so it can't be missed.

_Gone for a walk._  
_I'll be back._

* * *

It started as more of a run than a walk. The walk had lasted from the room he'd been standing in to the end of the road which could be visibly seen from the front window. The unplanned, but necessary, run had started right around the corner and it didn't enjoy its first pause until he was five miles the otherside of Bloomington. His shoulders shivered against the blue-black sky but his face was resolutely still.

He made the right decision. He had no doubts about that.

Only about everything else left in him after it.

(_Sometimes you lose sight of me now_ )

* * *

_Every time that I can't make a sound_

The walk starts eighteen hours later, after having to sit through a sunny day in a motel, most of them spent sitting in a chair in the corner of the room thinking about his options. He'd never thought about his options before because there were never options. Never other invitablities and conclusions or even midways points to consider. There had only been one path and one guidline and one point of brilliant light which he'd followed behind.

The hours crawl.

Gone in the blink of an eye.

The room is a shattered shamble when he leaves it.

The walking is easier than the sitting down. Some part of him, some part of him beyond the inability to ever be tired or to ever need to move when it is not part of the facade, is driven to move. He thinks of all their words, lets them fall through his mind crystal clear and pristine, as though it is happening right then. A year's worth of life lived through three people's minds.

He loves them, both of them, even loves their joy in each other. Even with a perfect memory he can't remember the last thing so undeniably beautiful, but beauty does not come with a prequisite on what it causes and makes no promises and no apologies for the wake it leaves.

* * *

_And I think that I'm starting to drown_

Crossing the 65 toward Kokomo is the first time Edward realizes how close he is to Chicago, Esme's words surfacing about the importance of the past from some dark, never forgotten corner. His gray past is closer and clearer than his future. He turns toward it with the relish of solidity pursued. It doesn't even take an hour. It drives him. A purpose, a reason, after foundering too long.

It should take longer to get the information he needs but Edward hardly needs to ask permission and wait for information to be given to him. Conversations turn to inevitable paperwork must be filled out and we'll need to checks, but even as he's nodding with that patient understanding they're telling him where the storage is and how everything was handled years ago. Their silent thoughts his anchor as they read papers, but set them aside waiting on backgrounds and verifications. Of course he doesn't mind the wait.

* * *

_Even when I try to take you down_

The gaurd goes home and the lock is the work of one milliseconds focus.

Dust and tarps over a million stacks articles and objects. He finds himself walking through it like a child, a dreamer, transported to an alien land. Fingers ghost the edge of things, pulling back long enough to glance over, passing over shapes that don't look appealing. Paintings which look familiar, yet now can be seen with the eye of critic and not the memory of a boy overlooking the every day. Chairs and bed tables and boxes with foreign hand writing announcing their contents to every casual glance.

He isn't here in this room. He's never been here, but he can't leave it. He should find something for Esme.

Some excuse for being gone for days beyond the look that Carlisle will neither believe or address.

There is refuge to be taken in the faithless assumption he will still be keeping his word.

* * *

_Every time that I think I'm alone_

The Victorian Grand sat in one corner. Even without disposition toward it, he finds himself compelled to free it from the mountain of boxes piled on top of it and the grey-green tarp which covers everything. There's something to being able to identify it clearly, clincally, with eyes that could not have once upon a time. The shine in the unpolished ebonized satinwood. The turned legs, the intricate fretting and the fish-tail. The ornately carved music stand, for all it's fragility only covered in dust.

It doesn't belong here, lost in a a sea of abandoned boxes and life.

It's a rare and beautiful work of art.

* * *

_And I can't find a word of my own_

It's another hour before he actually sits down at it, compelled finally by what he can't actually put words to. He's carrying music books he happened on in the last of the boxes he's been searching through. Nothing he's found is something he wants to show Esme, or have Esme put on display in a fashion where he'll have to look at continuously.

Edward hasn't forgotten what happened last time. It was an invaluable lessons about the before and after of this life. But he's sitting there anyway, thinking about division of past and present, how everything continues to change and evolve, but somethings can't be udnone and other can't be outrun, when his fingers lifted to fall across the keys in a gently scale.

He spends the rest of the night hours sitting there.

Creating the differences between a memory and a lesson, educating and eradicating them.

* * *

_You take me home_

He has to stop playing when morning, and the workers, return.

Relieved and reluctant, he turned back to the boxes. The mementos of his singular childhood do not interest him as much as the signs of his once upon a time parents. The collection of his father's leather bound law books. He opens them and lets his fingers feel the raised type, smell the faint mildew of the ill care of a storage container for such relics. His mother's make-up, jewelry and accessory boxes. A silver brush set. Dozens of little, padded, colorful boxes with sparkling trinkets.

By midday waiting is more trouble than he likes, and his gaze keeps returning to the Victorian Grand, especially once he finishes reading all the music books. He can not play it with so many people so close without drawing attention to himself. The urge won't leave him though and so he scours eight boxes before he finally finds a pen that hasn't dried out and begins sketching out an idea on the side of a box. Before he can even realize the minutes are pasing he's onto the second side of the second small box.

He can hear it, just at the edge of his thoughts, the emotion that he thought he'd been doing so well to keep at bay, watching it come out his finger tips in music notes is so alien and fragile he doesn't breath or think through most of it, even as the sounds evoke a million unforgotable memories. And in writing, he finally thinks.

Thinks, as though he hasn't been thinking for the last three days already. Maybe he hasn't been, maybe he's only been reacting, only been throwing the tempertantrum that would break the hearts of the two people who can't be let to see it, only been trying to walk the inside line of what thinking will accomplish, of what it will make impossible to not acknowledge or do.

* * *

_And then you change the world again_

He stared at the writing for hours, until the lights went off and the gaurd made his circuit.

When he walked back to the piano bench this time, torn sides of the box with him, his movements were slower, reluctant. He sat down and stare at the keys, hand and arms unmoving, fingers pressed against the bench at the sides of his leg. He sits there. Five minutes. Twenty. An hour. Then finally he moved. His hand shoved into his pocket and pulled out curled tight around something. He didn't look at it, just held it. Then without looking into his palm he placed it on the music stand.

A silver lion rampant in a thick band setting.

Edward lookged at the keys as his fingers moved to them, caught for the first moment in the way the keys and his fingers moved together more than the music which sounded in the all too small space. The acoustics were horrible for a performance, but started the music would not stop anytime soon. He wandered, fingers resolutely gentle

_down paths thoughts could not dream up or follow along side  
_

_through truths that were unavoidable, fragile, hypocritical, unequivocal_

_(I'll help, if you let me.)_

_past things which were and into things that would be_

_(I'm not going to be a good tour guide.)_

_into realms of possibility, probability, wishes, dreams, memories_

_(I wasn't a very happy soul before I met you.)_

_everything, even cacophony, coexisting harmonious._

_(I can't imagine a world where I don't want you with me,  
however I can keep you.)_

He knew.

He had always known.

_**You deserve everything.**_

That part had never changed.

Yet he'd never known he needed this.

* * *

_Every single thing I see, good or bad_

On the fourth morning, he drove back.

_You make it mean something better_

A clunky storage van; because he knows the truth.

_Every pleasure, every pain_

There are no options, no inevitably, no conclusions, no midways.

_Every nightmare that I dream_

There is only one path, one guideline and two points of brilliant light which are everything.

_You make it mean something better_


End file.
